1 Didrachm Beast series: facing left

Populonia, the only Etruscan city known to have struck its own coinage directly from locally smelted ore, drew its wealth from the iron deposits of Elba visible across the water from its coastal promontory. These didrachms belong to the earliest phase of Populonian silver, produced before the city transitioned to lighter weight standards in the fourth century. The multiple concordant references — Vecchi, Sambon, Jameson, BMC — reflect decades of scholarly effort to sequence a series with no written mint records and chronology built entirely from hoard evidence and die study.